A concept called Internet of Things (IoT) has been proposed recently in which various things are connected to the Internet. It is expected that various things are to be connected the Internet and that the number of things connected to the Internet will increase at an increasingly fast rate. There is a prediction that the number of IoT devices will exceed 26 billion units by the year 2020.
Examples of “things” here include not only IT (Internet Technology) equipment such as computers but also household electric appliances, kiosk terminals, automobiles, lighting apparatuses, and various types of sensors installed in buildings and streets. Not only these things, but anything in the real can be “things” in IoT.
As many things in the real world is connected to communication networks, there will be situations in which it is difficult for a user to identify a “thing” in the real world although the user can identify the “thing” by an identifier on a communication network and can communicate with the “thing”. A communication network will be hereinafter also simply referred to as a network.
PTL 1 describes a home information appliance operation system that recognizes, in a video, a marker in which an ID (Identification) is represented by a pattern of blinking of a light source such as an LED (Light Emitting Diode). The ID in PTL 1 is a MAC (Media Access Control) address or an IP (Internet Protocol) address, for example.
PTL 2 describes an optical marker system in which an LED marker implemented by an LED that blinks in a unique blinking pattern is detected in an image captured by a camera. The LED marker system described in PTL 2 estimates the position of the camera that captured an image of an LED marker on the basis of the position of the LED marker in a space in which the image was captured and the position of the LED marker detected in an image.